I write this in the Austin airport as we wait for our flight home from DrupalCon 2014. It's been a great trip, we've learned tons and definitely got very excited about Drupal 8. We also managed to expose Wendy to an insane quantity of nerds, and I got my first core commit at the Friday sprints!! (Derek and George will both have one soon, we hope, after the progress made today.) As I've said, we have learned a tremendous amount about Drupal 8, but we also have many great takeaways that will help us improve our Drupal 7 platform while D8 progresses. We'll have additional posts in the coming days to share those.
It was really great meeting a lot of talented and passionate people in the larger Drupal community. I've been working with Drupal for years, and this was the first DrupalCon I've attended. It goes a long way to bridge the gap from lurker to contributor and community member.